INTRODUCTION

The word " mathematics " comes from the Greek word , ( quantity ) ,
which

means

"science

knowledge

or

learning

"

( mathmatiks ) means "love of learning". The term now refers to a number of

specific knowledge - deductive study on quantity, structure, space, and money
(Hogkin, 2005).
While almost all cultures use basic math (counting and measuring), the
development of new mathematical been reported in some cultures and ages.
Before the modern era and the expansion of knowledge in all over the world,
examples of writing new mathematical development threatens glory on some
local people. Most ancient mathematical texts that can be obtained came from
ancient Egypt in the Middle Kingdom around 1300-1200 BC (Berlin 6619),
Mesopotamia around 1800 BC (Plimpton 322), and between 800-500 BC in
ancient India (Sulba Sutras). All text is paying attention to the so-called
Pythagorean

Theorem,

which

seems

to

be

the

earliest

mathematical

development and spread after basic arithmetic and geometry (Jourdain, 1920).
The first evidence of the truth of mathematical activity in China can be found on
numerical symbols on the sacred bone, dated to about 1300 BC, while the Han
Dynasty in ancient China contributed Handbook Sea Island and Nine Chapters on
the Mathematical Art from the 2nd century BC through the ages 2nd M. Greek
and Hellenistic cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the city of Syracuse add
mathematics. Mathematics Jainism contribute from the 4th century BC to the 2nd
century AD, while the Hindu mathematicians from the 5th century and
mathematicians of Islam from the 9th century made many contributions to
mathematics.
An interesting feature of note on the history of ancient and medieval
mathematics is a further development of mathematics (Yap, 2006) according to
how centuries of stagnation. First in Italy in the Middle Ages to the 16th century,
the

development

of

new

mathematics,

interacting

with

new

scientific

discoveries, have been performed on stage is always incremental, and

contiguous to this day.
HISTORY OF BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS
Babylonian mathematics refers to any person mathematics Mesopotamia (now
Iraq) from the early days of Sumer until the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. He

was named as mathematics as a major role Babylon Babylonia as a place of

study. However, it was later lost, in the Hellenistic period and from that time,
Babylon math mathematics joining Greece and Egypt to produce Hellenistic
mathematics.
In contrast to the lack of resources Egyptian mathematics, our
knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay
tablets excavated from the decade of the 1850s. Written in cuneiform script,
tablets were written while the clay is still wet and baked in the oven or by the
heat of the sun. Some of these tablets seem a revised school work. Mostly
excavated between the periods 1800 BC to 1600 BC covers topics that include
fractions, algebra, quadratic equations and the equation of the cube, as well as
the calculation of the triple Pythagorus (see Plimpton 322). The tablets also
include multiplication tables and trigonometry, as well as methods for solving
linear equations and quadratic. Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an estimate 2
accurate to five decimal places.
Babylonian mathematics was written using sexagesimal numeral system
(base - 60). Based on this, we use 60 seconds publishes a minute, 60 minutes
per hour, and 360 (60 x 6) the degree of unanimity. Babylonian mathematical
advances made easier by the fact that the number 60 has many divisors. Unlike
the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the Babylonians had a true place value
system, with the numbers written on the left column represent a larger value,
which is similar to the decimal system. However, they do not have a decimal
point and, therefore, the value of a symbol to be knotted by context.
In the study of Babylonian mathematics begin with the notation of
numbers. A vertical wedge stood for 1, while the characters and signified 10 and
100 respectively. Grotefend believes the character for 10 originally to have been
the picture of two hands, as held in prayer, the palms being pressed together,
the fingers close to each other, but the thumbs thrust out. In the Babylonian
notation two principles were employedthe additive and multiplicative. Numbers
below 100 were expressed by symbols whose respective values had to be added
(Hodgkin, 2005). Thus, stood for 2, for 3, for 4 for 23, for 30. Here the symbols of
higher order appear always to the left of those of lower order. In writing the
hundreds, on the other hand, a smaller symbol was placed to the left of the 100,
and was, in that case, to be multiplied by 100. Thus, signified 10 times 100, or
1000.

1. DISCUSSION THE DEFECT IN BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS

Writing on clay tablets using a cuneiform (a wedge-shaped stylus), the
Babylonians employed an incomplete sexagesimal (base 60) positional system of
numbers. The first 59 digits were written as a combination of two different
marks; the wedge

and the corner

as shown below.

When 60 was reached, the symbols were repeated to denote the number of
sixties. For example, 60 was denoted by

while 120 was denoted by

. The

same procedure was used to denote 60 2, 603 etc. Generally, symbols of higher
order appeared on the left. Today we use our own digits, along with semicolons
and commas to represent sexagesimal numbers.

Examples are shown below.

Sexagesima Babylonian

Decimal

63

1,3

3/4 = 45/60

0; 45

notation

There were several defects in the Babylonian numeration system that have been
identified and yet been discuss in depth by mathematicians.

The lack of a sexagesimal point.

For example,

could represent 2, 1 + 1/60, or even 2/60.

Ambiguous use of symbols.

For example the following numbers are represented by the same symbols.
Sexagesima Babylonian

Decimal

notation

12 = 10 + 2

12

602 = 10 60 + 2

1, 2

The absence of zero.

For example the following numbers are represented by the same symbols.
Decima Sexagesim
l

al

60

1, 0

Babylonian
notation

2. EXPLAIN AND ELABORATE WHAT IS PLIMPHTON 322

Plimpton 322 is the catalog name of an Old Babylonian (OB) clay tablet held at
Columbia University. The tablet is named after New York publisher George A.
Plimpton who purchased it from archaeology dealer Edgar J. Banks in the early
nineteen twenties. In the mid-thirties, the tablet, along with the rest of Mr.
Plimpton collection, was donated to Columbia University. According to Banks, the
tablet was found at Tell Senkereh, an archaeological site in southern Iraq
corresponding to the ancient Mesopotamian city of Larsa (Robson, 2002a).

Figure 1: The Plimpton 322 tablet (roughly to scale).

Plimpton 322 is just one of several thousand mathematical documents
surviving from ancient Iraq (also called Mesopotamia). In its current state, it
comprises a four- column, fifteen-row table of Pythagorean triples, written in
cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script on a clay tablet measuring about 13 by 9 by 2
cm. (Robson, 2002a). The handwriting of the headings is typical of documents
from southern Iraq of 4000- 3500 years ago. Its second and third columns list the
smallest and largest member of each triple-we can think of them as the shortest
side s and the hypotenuse d of a right angled triangle-while the final column
contains a line-count from 1 to 15.

There have been three major interpretations of the tablet's function since it was
first published [Figure 4]
1. Some have seen Plimpton 322 as a form of trigonometric table (e.g.,
[15]): if Columns II and III contain the short sides and diagonals of rightangled triangles, then the values in the first column are tan2 or 1/ cos2
-and the table is arranged so that the acute angles of the triangles
decrease by approximately 10 from line to line.
2. Neugebauer [19], and Aaboe following him, argued that the table was
generated like this:
If p and q take on all whole values subject only to the conditions
(1) p > q > O,
(2) p and q have no common divisor (save 1),
(3) p and q are not both odd,
then the expressions
X = p _ q [our s], 1
3. Finally, the interpretation first put forward by Bruins [5], [6] and repeated
in a cluster of independent publications about twenty years ago [4], [9],
[30] is that the entries in the table are derived from reciprocal pairs x and
lIx, running in descending numerical order from 2;24 - 0;25 to 1;48 - 0;33
20 (where - marks sexagesimal reciprocity). From these pairs the following
"reduced triples" can be derived:

s= s/i = (x - I/x)/2, 1'= 1/1=

1, d= dll =(x + I/x)/2.
The values given on the tablet, according to this theory, are all scaled up
or down by common factors 2, 3, and 5 until the coprime values s and d
are reached.
A great deal of emphasis has been laid on the uniqueness of Plimpton 322; how
nothing remotely like it has been found in the corpus of Mesopotamian
mathematics. Indeed, this has been an implicit argument for treating Plimpton
322 in historical isolation (Robson, 2002b).
Originally, Plimpton 322 was classified as a record of commercial
transactions (Abdulaziz, n.d.). However, after Neugebauer and Sachs gave a
seemingly irrefutable interpretation of it as something related to Pythagorean
triplets, the tablet gained so much attention that it has probably become the
most celebrated Babylonian mathematical artifact [Neugebauer and Sachs,
1945].
Plimpton 322, analyzed solely as a piece of mathematics, looked very
modern, al-though it was impossible to say which branch of modern mathematics
it most closely resembled: trigonometry, number theory, or algebra. It seemed
millennia ahead of its time, incomparably more sophisticated than other ancient
mathematical documents (Cellucci, 2012). But if we treat Plimpton 322 as a
cuneiform tablet that just happens to have mathematics on it, a very different
picture emerges. We see that it is a product of a very particular place and time,
heavily dependent on the ancient scribal environment for its physical layout as a
table, its mathematical content, and its function as a teacher's aid (Robson,
2001). All the techniques it uses are widely attested elsewhere in the corpus of
ancient Mesopotamian school mathematics. In this light we can admire the
organizational and arithmetical skills of its ancient author but can no longer treat
him as a far-sighted genius. Any resemblance Plimpton 322 might bear to
modem mathematics is in our minds, not his (Hodgkin, 2005).

REFERENCE
Abdulaziz, A. A. (n.d.). The Plimpton 322 Tablet and the Babylonian Method of
Generating Pythagorean Triples, 134.
Cellucci, C. (2012). Top-Down and Bottom-Up Philosophy of Mathematics.
Foundations of Science, 18(1), 93106. doi:10.1007/s10699-012-9287-6
HODGKIN, L. (2005). A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity.
Zhurnal Eksperimentalnoi i Teoreticheskoi Fiziki. OXFORD UNIVERSITY
PRESS. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?
hl=en&btnG=Search&q=intitle:No+Title#0
Jourdain, P. E. B. (1920). Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 10(145), 46.
doi:10.2307/3603237
Robson, E. (2001). Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Babylon: A Reassessment of
Plimpton 322. Historia Mathematica, 28(3), 167206.
doi:10.1006/hmat.2001.2317
Robson, E. (2002a). Words and Pictures: New Light on Plimpton 322,
322(February).
Robson, E. (2002b). Words and Pictures: New Light on Plimpton 322. The
American Mathematical Monthly, 109(2), 105. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2695324?origin=crossref
Yap, A. (2006). Mathematical Practice And The Philosophy of Mathematics, (July).